


the will and the body

by radialarch



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, M/M, the zucchini is a metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24510556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: There was no way out but through. “And as I thought you might appreciate, well, a more delicate touch in certain circumstances you’ve suggested you might enjoy—”“Fucking,” said Felix. “In bed.”//A full and unvarnished accounting of the summer of zucchini.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	the will and the body

**Author's Note:**

> **me** , innocent and unaware: yeah so dimitri is really strong  
>  **gdgdbaby** , entirely responsible for what is about to occur: can you PLEASE write a story about dimitri learning not to crush felix's junk with his giant hands
> 
> i think this should answer any & all questions about what follows.

When Dimitri looks back on the affair, which was mortifying at the time but with distance has acquired a halo of humor, the chronology of events seems to be as follows:

1\. Felix Hugo Fraldarius, in his characteristic way, had recently evinced a desire to engage in more intimate relations.

[ _I absolutely did not_.

You stormed into my bedchambers, told me I was a fool, and tried to bite my fingers.

 _Yes_.]

2\. During his last visit, Dedue had bestowed upon the kitchen staff the seeds of a plant known in Duscur as _zucchini_ , and which the head cook called _sweet marrow_.

3\. At a reception for the Almyran ambassador, during which many dainty morsels of meats and fruit had been served on delicate skewers, Dimitri had snapped nearly a dozen of the sticks and left with splinters in his fingers. “Careful, Your Majesty,” Sylvain had said, as irreverent as ever. “All that strength, who knows what it could do to something more … delicate.”

Then he’d winked at Felix, and Felix, with a snarl, had nearly run a member of the court through with a fork. This had, for some reason, impressed the Almyran ambassador, but meant that for days after, at the slightest provocation, Sylvain would show off the four neat puncture marks lined along the ruffle of his shirt and call it a _war wound_.

[ _He could have changed the damn shirt. He has actual war wounds._]

Coming one after another as they had, these events had seemed to raise for Dimitri both the problem and the answer: namely, how was Dimitri to deal with the matter of his strength?

[ _Could’ve tied you down, if you’d bothered to ask_.

You did do that.

 _But not before a whole lot of nonsense_.]

—

At nine years old, Dimitri, his palms still soft and free of calluses, had been handed his first training sword; and he had, with the excitement of a nine-year-old boy and a strength considerably greater, swung it so hard the carved wooden blade separated from the carved wooden hilt and gone flying, nearly striking Gustave in the head. Glenn had been old enough then to laugh at the crown prince and young enough to find this endlessly amusing. Felix still recalled the incident with some frequency, though these days he did it with more fondness.

[ _You said this was to be an honest recounting._

It is.]

The Blaiddyd Crest, depending on whom one asked, was either a gift from the Goddess herself to the Kingdom of Faerghus, or a tremendous source of annoyance. That latter opinion had generally been championed by Lambert, frequently and with a conspiratorial laugh, before his death; now only Dimitri was left to share it. 

He broke things less than he used to, by dint of sheer practice. His horse’s mouth remained soft, his best weapons whole, and he could go days now without snapping his quill. With Mercedes’s patient coaching, he had even acquired the ability to mend rips in his clothing with rough, uneven stitches—nothing to be proud of, except for the miracle of Dimitri pulling something together, rather than apart.

[ _[a violent scribble]_

What?

_Nothing. You._ ]

So: the strength in Dimitri’s hands could be tamed. It only required effort.

Here entered the excess of marrow.

—

“Your Majesty,” said the head cook, whose name Dimitri belatedly recalled to be Agnes. “I don’t know what your man intended, but the situation is nigh intolerable. The monsters just won’t stop growing! How can I work when I must send the girls out to pluck more of the cursed things daily, and the very next day: new ones, bold as brass!”

Further questioning revealed that the cursed things in question were some sort of squash. He was presented a specimen, accusatorily. The rind was green, roughly textured but thin, and when Dimitri cut into it the flesh was pale-yellow and firm. “I don’t understand,” said Dimitri, baffled. “Can we not eat them?”

Agnes swelled with indignity. “We _have_ eaten them,” she said, “grilled, baked, dressed, raw—so have the chickens, the pigs, even the sheep, and _still_ they grow in the gardens. I have spent forty years serving this House, I’ve put to use every method of cooking I know, there is _bread_ in the oven with these horrible things, and yet in the halls I hear _whispers_ that the kitchens have grown tired and Your Majesty’s hospitality is lacking, I _say_ —”

[ _Two bloody moons, and you never noticed._

What, exactly, would I have noticed?

_The blasted things sitting on your plate!_

I have other places to look at dinnertime.]

“Send them to me,” Dimitri said without thinking. Then he recalled the last time he’d had this conversation, when, to his astonishment, he had discovered that his inability to taste could be construed as an insult to professional pride. “Not for eating,” he added hastily. “Which is a job you perform admirably. I, ah, may have another need for them, and I thank you for bringing the solution to my attention.”

Agnes gave him a suspicious look, but she would not dare question the king on so direct an order. “As you say, Your Majesty,” she curtsied, and left. Dimitri looked down at his hand, where the dark green rind of the marrow had split under his grip, and fervently willed that his sudden desire for vegetable matter would go unremarked upon.

[ _You know what she thought_.

Felix!

 _It’s what I would have done with them_.

Felix!!!!!]

—

Normally, the king did not abscond from the castle clad in tattered clothing with a heavy sack slung over his shoulder; so it was that when Dimitri did exactly this, he did so in relative anonymity. Not completely—there would be questions later—but for the moment, Dimitri could slip into the forest unsurveilled.

There was a clearing he had enjoyed playing in as a child. The stump he remembered was still there, worn smooth from time and tiny, grubby hands. He sat, setting the sack down beside his feet, and contemplated it as he might hot iron.

Well, there was nothing to be gained by waiting. He closed his eyes, wincing at his cowardice, and reached into the mouth of the sack.

[ _You never did have much patience._ ]

There were tricks Dimitri generally used to avoid the breaking of precious things. Small objects cupped in his palm; fingers ringed loosely around a staff or the shaft of a lance. So he held the marrow now, rolling gently against the curl of his fingers, unblemished and whole.

Then he tightened his grip, jerky and too hard, and the marrow cracked jaggedly down the middle, pale slippery seeds spilling over his hand.

Dimitri let the pieces drop to the ground and wiped his hand on the hem of his shirt, which he’d rescued out of the rag basket again just the past week. The second attempt went just as badly, his thumb sinking through the tough green skin into the soft flesh beneath. The third he held for a heartbeat, considering the curious waxy texture of the rind under his fingertips. This was, it occurred to Dimitri, somewhat unusual. He had not often had the chance—had the _luxury_ —of experiencing something in this way: slow and deliberate, for no other purpose than to feel.

His concentration wobbled. The marrow bruised, then split into two uneven halves, leaving a cool slick film on his fingers.

Dimitri sighed. Reached once more into the sack and began again.

—

The first thing Felix said when he emerged from the brush was, “I remember this place.” Then he glanced over at Dimitri, with the detritus of the past hour heaped at his feet, and choked. 

[ _It was quite a sight._

I’m sure.]

“Felix!” Dimitri nearly stood up, thought better of it, and dropped the marrow in his hand. It remained whole, which was in some ways a sign of progress. “Did you need something?”

“Is this where they all went?” Felix was surveying the ground like he might a battlefield. “Not that I mind, but why have you—did that girl Flayn talk you into this?”

“The Bishop’s sister? No, I haven’t seen her in some time. Why would she be involved?”

Difficult to tell in the afternoon light, but the tips of Felix’s ears were a translucent pink. “There was an incident with fruit that she—never mind. A note came for you.”

He came straight through the mangled vegetation to take a seat on the stump next to Dimitri: a tight fit now that they were grown, when it had once easily held four children. “I’m not a messenger,” Felix said, pulling the note from his pocket with two fingers. “Here, take it.”

Dimitri, who knew fully well the relationship between the chamberlain and Felix, could only assume that Felix had volunteered for the job. “I can’t,” he said, gesturing to his hands, still wet with plant matter. “Read it for me?”

[ _I wouldn’t say I volunteered._

You can say anything you’d like.]

A pause, then Felix tore open the note. Dimitri shifted to give Felix’s elbow more room. “Hm,” Felix said, eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. “Molinaro’s coming to visit.”

“Oh, good,” said Dimitri, scrubbing his palms on his thighs. “I always enjoy Dedue’s visits, and perhaps he’ll have insight into the cook’s problem.”

“The problem,” said Felix, “which you’ve elected to solve by mangling a quantity of them in a forest.”

“I wouldn’t say mangling,” Dimitri protested. “In fact, the original goal involved little to no mangling at all.”

“Your original goal,” Felix said slowly, and looked at Dimitri’s hands. Swept an errant seed away from the back of Dimitri’s finger and kept his hand there, after, warm skin laid against his. “Were you,” he said, “that is to say, you were _handling—_ ” his voice slid up on the word “—these things, which have overrun the gardens, for a sensitive sort of reason—”

“For practice,” Dimitri broke in, unwilling to let Felix go on. “It proved helpful in the past, especially in the matter of my, er, strength—”

“Uh huh,” Felix said, voice trembling with the beginning of a laugh. “I see.”

There was no way out but through. “And as I thought you might appreciate, well, a more delicate touch in certain circumstances you’ve suggested you might enjoy—”

“Fucking,” said Felix. “In bed.”

The clear, crisp way Felix’s mouth curved around the word: a shock every time. “I don’t believe you said it in exactly that way,” Dimitri said. “But. Well. Yes.”

Felix laughed, full-throated, head thrown back to the sky, and Dimitri couldn’t help it; a mound of green surrounded him, and the hem of his shirt was still drying, sticky and slow, but here was Felix, come to find him for conversation and the pleasure of his company; so Dimitri laughed, too, loud and bright, and felt it fill up his rib cage with warmth.

[ _You are, undoubtedly, the biggest fool in all of Fódlan._

I didn’t want to hurt you.

_I know. [illegible] You’re always careful with me._ ]

—

“All the seeds?” said Dedue, a frown on his brow. “That was a great many.”

“Well, we expected they’d be like carrots,” said Agnes, twisting her hands in her apron. “And seeing as how they’re from warmer climes, so some seeds might not survive…”

“Ah,” said Dedue. “Yes. I should have been more clear. The plant is very robust and bears many fruit over the growing season.”

“So we’ve learned,” said Dimitri, as gravely as he could. “If you could share any preparation methods from home, that would be most welcome, my friend. I believe there are some who tire of the usual fare.”

Dedue glanced at Felix, glowering behind Dimitri’s shoulder, and in the shadow of the castle garden Dimitri could swear he saw his serious mouth twitch in a rare smile. “I understand,” he said. “I will offer some suggestions.”

“But save some for Dimitri,” Felix suggested, with a light hand at the small of Dimitri’s back, fleeting and out of sight. “He’s found some private uses for the stuff.”

“That’s slander against your king,” Dimitri said, turning to hide the heat running up his neck from Dedue and the staff. Felix’s eyes were dancing, bright, and laughter had turned his mouth soft. He gave in to his desire, pressed Felix back against the stone wall and kissed him, slow; and Felix opened up for him, a hand creeping up to curl around the back of Dimitri’s neck, so that for a moment, the small space between them felt like the world.

—

[ _Good thing I never wanted children._

Felix!

_Ugh, fine, you were a model of propriety &c. You could stand to be less careful, you know._

[a large splatter of ink]

_And if you must, the brat who scored a hit on you last week is almost tolerable. Clean footwork. Nice form._

[meticulously scratched out] I’ll keep that in mind.]


End file.
